Now that’s planning, Albany

Today’s editorial: The Planning Board agrees to move its meetings to a more convenient time. So goes another triumph for public accountability.

Chalk up another milestone, as welcome as it’s overdue, for open government. Kudos to the Albany Planning Board, for succumbing to some not-so-subtle political pressure and agreeing to meet at a time more convenient for the public, whose interests it’s supposed to serve.

That would be evenings, of course. That would be when the work day is done for most people, and everyone from the intensely civically engaged to those with a pending and vested interest in the Planning Board’s business can attend its meetings.

The letter of the state’s Open Meetings Law says nothing about such issues. But the spirit of that law surely would call for a schedule that accommodates the public.

The Planning Board is now just like seemingly every other municipal government body that comes to mind. All those city councils, town boards commissions and committees meet at night.

“It came down to this. Why were we the only entity in the Capital Region that met during the daytime?” asks Common Council Majority Leader Daniel Herring, who pushed for the change. “Why were we different from everyone else?”

No good reason, at least not that the Planning Board itself could offer. Its initial response to the suggestion that it move its meetings was a classic case of not getting it.

Yes, meeting on weekday mornings accommodated the city engineer, other municipal officials and the various developers and lawyers who attend those sessions. Them, but no one else. Yet none of the people affected by the change resisted the move, either, Mr. Herring says.

Give the board a point or two, then, for shrewd politics. Mr. Herring was prepared to force the issue, by having the council pass a law that would have required evening meetings. The vote, he says, most likely would have been unanimous, rare as that is for the council.

Forcing the issue like that might have made for good political theater, though. Albany might have been reminded yet again how the council has become notably more assertive. There was a time when its members might have resented a Planning Board meeting schedule that showed little regard for public accountability yet gone along with it.

Instead, here’s the board’s acting chairman, Edward Trant, wondering what all the fuss was about.